Obama’s new ‘AttackWatch.com’ website smells like political fear

By David McElroy · September 14, 2011

One of the first things you learn in politics is to never repeat the charges that your opponent makes about you. It’s counter-intuitive for most people, but after you’ve been in the business for awhile, you learn that if you defend yourself by explaining what your opponents are saying — and why they’re wrong — you end up reinforcing what the opponents are saying, even if they’re wrong.

Because of that, I’m shocked to see Barack Obama’s re-election campaign falling into one of the worst traps I’ve ever seen. The campaign has set up a website that it calls “AttackWatch.com.”

If you set up a site that talks about the lies your enemy is telling about you, all you’re doing is giving them — and their lies — publicity. I know it appeals to the rational side of the brain to respond, but I guarantee that it doesn’t work 98 times out of 100.

If your opponent is attacking you, the way to respond is to attack back, putting the opponent on the defensive. But if you’re a sitting U.S. president, you don’t do anything except sell yourself — without even talking about your opponents.

My point here isn’t to give advice to Obama. He can afford much higher-priced advice than I am. It’s simply to point out that people in the Obama camp are scared. I assume they’re looking at poll numbers and starting to get worried that he might be a one-term president.

I’m sure that the new AttackWatch site will be popular among Obama supporters. The people who love you are always happy with you go on the offensive to “set the record straight,” because they honestly believe it works. (Everyone has a cognitive bias for assuming that explaining things from his point of view will make others suddenly see the light.) But all it’s really going to do, in my opinion, is bring more attention to the charges that are being made. It’s a very bad idea.

The fact that Obama’s advisors are scared enough to do something such as this would give me hope if there were anybody on the Republican side who I thought would do a better job. I do think a Republican has a decent shot at winning next year, but I don’t have any hope that anyone with the right ideas is going to take Obama’s place.

The U.S. presidency is an odd case of musical chairs right now. No matter who’s sitting there when the collapse happens, that person isn’t going to be the one to blame alone. It’s been a bi-partisan mess for many decades. They all have reason to be scared about how history is going to view them.

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When I came home from a late lunch this afternoon, there were six or eight people gathered in the front yard of a house a couple of doors down from me. They were all dressed up, as though they had been to church for Easter and hadn’t yet changed. An older couple just moved into that house and I haven’t met them yet, but it seemed that they were with their son or daughter, maybe a sibling, and a couple of very young children. They were taking pictures and it took me back to my own childhood, visiting my grandparents in fancy Easter clothes and smiling for pictures in their yard. Holidays such as Easter and Christmas remind me in a small way of why I want a family. I wish I’d had a wife and children to be taking pictures with this afternoon. I still hope to experience that. And I hope you enjoyed your Easter Sunday, whether it was filled with a loving family or not.

I came home late Saturday afternoon to find that somebody had cut my grass while I was gone — and I had no idea who to thank. I walked around the neighborhood asking if anybody saw what happened, and I finally figured out it was my neighbor, Pedro. (That’s not his real name, but I’ve told you about him before.) He was cutting his own grass and did mine while he was at it. He even swept my walkway and porch steps. And he didn’t want any payment. He said it was no big deal. When I hear bigots talk about how we don’t need any more Hispanic immigrants and hear idiocy such as the notion that “we’re full,” I find myself thinking how much worse off I’d be without people such as Pedro. I’m grateful for his giving spirit. He’s a great neighbor.

I get a lot of email from people asking for advice. I don’t always have time to respond, but when I do, I like to remind them that the only reason I can offer any advice is that I’ve lived through so many of my own mistakes. In the coming weeks, I’m going to start putting out a series of short videos to answer some of the most common questions that I receive. I already have dozens of questions to choose from, but if you have a question that you think might be applicable to others, be sure to drop me an email. If I end up using some portion of your question, I won’t include personally identifiable details. I don’t know when the first video will go live, but I’ll be in the studio working on them.

Modern culture disturbs me. Sane lives are mocked and insane ideas are celebrated. I just read a story about a woman in England who “married herself” in 2015. A man had chosen another woman over her, so her response was to show everybody that she had no need for a partner — and she had a “wedding” with a dozen bridesmaids and they all danced around in the street as she “married herself,” with some guy dressed like a high-church priest. Nothing says, “I didn’t really need you,” like this sort of bizarre exhibition, huh? The woman then wrote a novel about a woman who married herself. None of this will affect me, of course. We’ve always had iconoclasts. I’m a bit of one myself. But it seems as though modern culture has become one huge freak show — and it seems unhealthy.

There’s a little girl at the table next to me at dinner Thursday evening who makes me happy. She’s a second grader and I heard her telling her grandmother, “I have a thousand books and I’m going to read all of them.” A few minutes later, she asked her grandmother, “What does stupendous mean?” (I’m not sure I would have known that word in the second grade.) At one point, I asked her if she likes to read and her eyes lit up. “I’m going to write my own books,” she said. I don’t know what this little lady’s future is, but it made me happy to talk to such a bright and enthusiastic girl.

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